The "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption.
See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com

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Sunday, June 4, 2017

Children, Family Systems, and Parental Alienation

Yesterday I was listening to an audio recording of an
appeals court hearing related to a high-conflict divorce and the wish of two
teenage daughters to avoid contact with their mother. The father’s attorney
brought up the point that one of the girls was headstrong, obstinate, difficult
to persuade, and always had been so. The characteristics attributed to the girl
were presented as an argument why the father could not force her to visit her
mother, but there was no mention of the role her characteristics might have
played in her initial reluctance to have contact with one of her parents.

When children of high-conflict divorces have strong
preferences for one parent and avoid the other parent, the non-preferred parent
may allege that the preferred parent has intentionally alienated the child and
turned him or her against the non-preferred one. This is especially likely to
occur if certain attorneys or mental health practitioners or “coaches” are in
the picture. These advisers rather piously allude to family systems theory and
the need for all members of a family to work together, even though they live
apart. They invoke family systems theory as a reason why courts should order
changes of custody and forced treatment of children who avoid one parent. They
argue that unless a child has a “reasonable” explanation for avoiding a parent,
the avoidance must be a result of parental alienation (PA) by the preferred
parent; that parent should be punished, and the children should be rescued so
they can reunite with the non-preferred parent. (“Reasonable” explanations are
limited to substantiated child abuse.)

But let’s look at family systems theory for a minute.
This fruitful theory considers all members of a family to bring their unique
characteristics into family and dyadic interactions. This means children too,
of course—but PA proponents generally focus on the preferred parent, who is
described as narcissistic and emotionally disturbed, but who has almost never
been seen or interviewed by the person giving this description. Little is said
about the personality characteristics of the non-preferred parent, and even
less about the personality characteristics of the children.

Going back to the “headstrong” girl described in the first
paragraph of this post, let’s speculate (yes, SPECULATE, because no one has
really studied this) about how child characteristics could lead to avoidance of
a parent even when there was no demonstrable abuse by the non-preferred parent
and no intentional or unintentional attempts at alienation by the preferred
parent.

What I am about to say has nothing to do with
diagnostic categories of mental illness, although a child with real mental
disturbance or developmental problems like autism might rather readily come to
avoid a parent who did not handle those problems very well. But all children, whether
emotionally or mentally typical or atypical, have from the time of birth
individual patterns of responsiveness to the environment, created by their own
unique constitutions. These patterns are often referred to as patterns of temperament, and although no one could
claim that temperament explains everything about personality, this concept is
of enormous help to understanding of social interactions and why two people do
or do not get along well.

Studies of temperament suggest that the patterns
unique to an individual in infancy are stable and are still present at 2 years,
5 years, 10 years, and into adulthood. Naturally children do not continue to
express their temperaments in the same ways as they get older, because they
mature and learn to behave conventionally, but they do retain basic
constitutional characteristics. For example, the person who cried a great deal
and was easily distressed as an infant will not cry so much as an older child
but will still show more negative mood quality than most other children of the
same age.

Research on temperament has focused on characteristics
that make an infant difficult to care for. Difficult infants tend to have
negative mood quality, to react intensely to internal or external events, and
to be slow to adapt to changes. They are often distressed and are hard to
soothe. They need a lot of time to get used to new situations like starting
out-of-home child care. Because these temperamental characteristics are rather
stable, we can predict that these difficult babies will also later be the
children who go to the beach all summer but will not go into the water until Labor
Day, who cry when there is a clown at the birthday party, and who need to be
taken to visit a new school several times before opening day so they will be
able to cope.

So what does all this have to do with avoiding the
non-preferred parent? Again, let me say that this is pure speculation on my
part, because as far as I know work on PA has largely ignored child characteristics
(I have just seen one reference to this factor in an on line paper by Bala and
Fidler.) But a plausible hypothesis can be offered: children who have the
temperament of difficult infants may bring to high-conflict divorce an unusual
readiness to prefer one parent and avoid the other. A tendency to a generally
negative mood quality pushes such children in the direction of disliking
whatever new situation they find themselves in. Intense reactions predispose
them to strong distress that may be very difficult for them – or for either of
their parents—to tolerate. The factor of poor adaptability means that these
children will take a good deal of time before they can feel comfortable with
changing circumstances, including new living conditions and contacts with parents’
new romantic partners (and possibly those people’s children). Children of
difficult temperaments need appropriate parental support to help them deal with
the world and eventually master the skill of looking beyond their own
temperamental reactions, but in high-conflict divorces the chances are that
neither parent will immediately be able to provide such support. The entire
situation seems designed to cause such children to decide that they can only tolerate
what is happening if they can choose one parent and stay with that person.

Yes, I’m speculating when I hypothesize about how
child temperament may be relevant to PA. But I’m not speculating when I say
that family systems theory would demand attention to child characteristics. The
question is, which characteristics are the ones that interact with
high-conflict divorce to create avoidance of one parent? Temperament is a strong possibility, but not
the only one.

N.B. Readers may notice that I don’t speak of children
“rejecting” a parent. I believe that language plays into the sense of
humiliation and frustration that motivates some non-preferred parents to
believe that the former spouse has manipulated the children. To speak of “avoidance” seems to me to make
the issue less personal and more focused on the child’s needs and feelings.

14 comments:

My one issue with this "I can't force a child to see a parent" argument from other parents is that if that same child declared that they didn't want to go to school anymore and weren't going to continue any kind of education I doubt the parent would just say "Well, I can't force them to go" and end any efforts therein.

Your point is well taken, and obviously we do make children do many things that they would prefer to avoid! However, I think most parents would want to know why a child refused school, and if the reason offered involved some disturbing experience, the parents would make an effort to correct the situation, send the child to a different school, or whatever was possible. These solutions may not be available with respect to contact with another parent, and accepting the child's refusal may be the only option that appears open. I would point out that most "alienated" parents are not likely to give up a new romantic partner if that person's presence is what leads to a child's avoidance.

I concur. I would bet that the girls did tell their mother that they did not want to live with the "romantic partner". I would assume it felt like their mother picked the boyfriend over their wishes to not live with someone they felt was a pretentious guy who lived off their mom. And if this is the same appeal I listened too, then adding family bridges just made the girls even further from wanting any relationship.

I was manic last time I reached out to you, my apologies for everything about it. I think my breakdown's almost over. It came with an insight, though, and I think I'm getting closer to being able to stick to a point and articulate it. It's here if you're curious, or at least a large part of it, enough for a professional, that's for sure.

" However, I think most parents would want to know why a child refused school, and if the reason offered involved some disturbing experience, the parents would make an effort to correct the situation, send the child to a different school, or whatever was possible."

I agree. There could be a perfectly legitimate reason why the child doesn't want to see the parent/go to school - but if they don't ask why and just say they can't make them it hints towards unresolved issues with their ex. It might not be intentional alienation or any other act like that, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

I think they probably do ask why the child doesn't want to go. There are many practical reasons why a parent might like the child to go to the other parent for a while, and I doubt that most of them just immediately accept or encourage the child's decision.

hey, I've put my favourite one up now - but still requires some patience, I'm afraid. It gets much better halfway through and I promise it will have been worth it by the end, and it's not long. I think I've debunked original sin, that we're born "bad" or even "wild." Hint: we aren't born "bad" enough! http://punishmentmadeobsoletebypsychology.blogspot.ca/

Hello LB-- no, I had not, and thanks for sending! I plan to talk to my assemblyman about it this coming week. I looked into the background of the three main contributors to this, as I am sure you have also done. What a Trojan horse--

Hi Jean, I'm not sure if you remember me from the Tsimhoni Revisited group, Lorrie, we spoke a few times during that disaster of a case. I'm just now reading the comments on this article. Do you have any update on that study posted above? I'm in NJ and if there is anything I can do please say the word. You can still reach me at the tsimhonirevisted email or at llg.tactical.coaching@gmail.com I'm going to do a little research on my end and see what I can find out. Thank you in advance.

Hi Lorrie-- I almost missed this message, sorry! As far as I can see, more recent publications have presented very little empirical information about children who avoid a parent. There are lots of articles, but they all tend to just repeat the same arguments. I can send you some recent things if you would like them. Also, I'm going to give your name to someone presently embroiled in a PA dispute in NJ.

About Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mercer

Jean Mercer has a Ph.D in Psychology from Brandeis University, earned when that institution was 20 years old (you do the math). She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College, where for many years she taught developmental psychology, research methods, perception, and history of psychology. Since about 2000 her focus has been on potentially dangerous child psychotherapies, and she has published several related books and a number of articles in professional journals.
Her CV can be seen at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/12/curriculum-vitae-jean.mercer-richard.html.